Scholar Update: Ipshita Banerjee

Ipshita Banerjee is a 2018 Inlaks scholar, with an M.Ed. in
Special Education (Severe and Comprehensive Disabilities) from
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA and an M.A. in Psychology from Delhi University. She is also a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). She received an award for Distinguished Service in Applied Behavior Analysis in 2020 from Vanderbilt University. After graduating, she worked with the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt as a researcher and clinical supervisor for a year, where her primary research focus was bilingual communication interventions for children with autism. She has been working in the field of special education since 2013. She returned to India in 2022 and co-founded an organisation called Project I with a fellow BCBA in Gurugram, near New Delhi.

 We spoke with Ipshita to know more about her work, its challenges and learnings, as well as her future plans. Read on to know more.

What inspired you to pursue Special Education as a career?

You know, I feel like the field chose me, instead of the other way around. My first interaction with neurodiverse learners was through an internship during my Masters in Psychology. I was initially planning to go down the counselling/clinical psychology route, but working with children seemed way too much fun, and I found myself switching paths. After graduating, I started working at the Autism Centre for Excellence (ACE) in Gurugram, where we were trained in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) by professionals from the US. Three weeks into the job, I knew that this was it. I absolutely loved everything about my work- the learners I worked with, the science I was training in, and above all, the challenge that each day brought, in bridging the gap between my worldview, and the worldview of my students. However, while I knew I wanted to specialize in ABA (which is a science of learning and behavior), I also identified a huge learning gap in my knowledge base. ABA taught me how to teach and how to set goals, but I felt like I needed some more training on what to teach, especially when working with learners with high support needs in group-based settings, instead of 1:1 settings. Special Education was the answer to that for me, and I decided to pursue a second Masters in Special Education, with a focus on severe and comprehensive disabilities. Vanderbilt’s dual track program offered me the opportunity to obtain a degree in Special Education as well as ABA.

What was the experience of getting a Masters at Vanderbilt like?

It was an absolutely incredible experience. Peabody College at Vanderbilt has a top-ranked program in Special Education that balances theoretical foundations, fieldwork experience and research. I entered the program with very specific questions, goals, and expectations, based on my five years of experience in the field in India. The program was perfect - we learned from experts in the field during classes, and had the opportunity to immediately implement what we had learned through practicum placements in classrooms and clinical settings. Further, being a university with a strong research focus, Vanderbilt provided extensive research experience and training. The field of ABA trains us to be ‘scientist-practitioners’- which essentially requires us to constantly check and monitor the effectiveness of our teaching methods through experimental analysis and careful data collection, ensuring that we always modify and individualize our teaching to maximize student progress. As a researcher, I gained invaluable experience in designing and implementing research projects from conceptualization to implementation and data analysis. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to co-author and work on five different research projects during my time at Vanderbilt, that culminated in publications in peer-reviewed journals.

There were very few international students in my program which was challenging to navigate. I however took this opportunity to share a completely different outlook towards disability and Special Education as experienced in South East Asia, and brought in cultural nuances to classroom conversations and discussions.

Outside of scholarly pursuits, my time in Nashville was life-changing. Nashville is known as Music City, and being a live-music lover, I was thrilled to watch many of my favorite musicians perform live, and be exposed to live music everywhere I went.

Could you tell us a bit more about the work you do at Project I?

I co-founded Project I with my colleague Neetika Thapan, to meet a growing need for services from qualified professionals for neurodiverse individuals with high support needs, particularly in the teenage and young adult age group. The “I” in the name stands for Identity, Inclusion, Interaction, and Independence, which are the values that guide our work. Project I primarily offers services that address the needs of older neurodiverse individuals through a program that focuses on emotional regulation, age-appropriate socialization, community readiness, and vocational training. While direct work with learners is a large part of what we do, we strongly believe that true inclusion is a two-way street, and hence our motto is “to prepare the child for the world, and the world for the child”. We work closely with the community that surrounds our learners - service providers, caregivers, family, and friends, to enable effective communication and learn how to build a community that respects the identity of different individuals. With that aim in mind, our work encompasses trainings, workshops and advocacy movements within the community, as well as providing mentorship and supervision to other early-career professionals looking to get certified in India to become behavior analysts and work in the field.

What have been the biggest challenges and learnings of your professional journey so far?

I absolutely love what I do, though each day brings with it a set of new challenges. At this point in my career, my challenges lie primarily in balancing the role of an entrepreneur with that of a clinical therapist. Within the clinical domain, the primary challenge has been to adapt my knowledge and training (which is based on data and studies in the Global North) to address the needs of my learners in India and the Global South. As service providers, we juggle between dealing with grassroot-level issues such as lack of knowledge of neurodevelopmental disorders, diagnosis, and resources, to larger systemic issues such as stigma, ignorance, and bias in a community that is yet to understand how to include diverse learners in their midst. In addition, we are battling an education system to create spaces for individualizing education for ALL learners, not just those with “special needs”. My biggest learning over the ten years of my career has been to push for a truly collaborative approach when working with a learner. Caregivers, other professionals (speech therapists, occupational therapists, etc.), and families play such a crucial role in the lives of the individuals we serve, and it is really important to build meaningful relationships with them, include them in goal setting and interventions, and ensure that the whole team feels supported and equipped to continue supporting learners across different stages in their lives.

What areas of Special Education would you like to explore going forward?

Since we work primarily with adolescents and young adults, we have been trying to research extensively in the field of emotional regulation, especially for students who are nonlanguage abled (i.e., with limited or no vocal communication). We are excited about developing curricula around this. Additionally, I am passionate about the adaptation of existing interventions to include culturally relevant variables within the field of Special Education and applied behavior analysis, and conduct research in India to contribute to the global knowledge base in the field. ABA in India is yet to be recognized in the same way as it is in the West, and there is a lot of misinformation about the field in India. We also are working towards bringing in more trauma-based, compassionate approaches to the field of Special Education and ABA in India, to make learning more child-centered and fun for diverse learners.

What advice would you give someone interested in exploring this field?

I’d say please go for it! There is a dearth of qualified service providers in India. While working in the field is challenging and requires a whole different skill set of patience, passion, and motivation, it is one of the most incredibly fulfilling experiences with a steep learning curve. Special Education and ABA are both incredible fields that train you on how to teach, but also help you understand behavior and different motivations. My advice to anyone interested in exploring the field would be to pursue it seriously - ensure you get the right education and training, put in the hours of fieldwork required, and understand the ethics of the field before practicing independently. We work with extremely vulnerable populations, and unfortunately, in an effort to meet the growing demand of professionals in India, there are often situations where service providers may do more harm than good, if they are not trained properly and do not go through systems that have their checks and balances.